A weary sigh filtered down from above. “All right, Lazarus. No more. Stay there.”
Lazz clenched a fist and popped it up in the air, spreading two fingers in victory sign as the speaker clicked off. “Yes!” He turned back to me. “I knew that that would do it. She survived the first three when I wouldn’t take no for an answer to my marriage proposal ten years ago, but that was a tough problem for her. After her first shit-for-husband, she was gun-shy.”
I could literally hear him growling as his whole posture changed, but I was curious: “So after that you terrorized her to get her to marry you?”
“It was done with love,” Lazz defended. “She needed someone a little bit crazy, and we were meant for each other.” He grinned. “Elizabeth and Lazarus, Liza and Lazz. See?” Then he turned serious. “I had to get her to get her to look at life, and herself, differently. When that freak she had been married to wasn’t drunk and beating her up, or taunting her about her weight, he was a sullen bore who didn’t believe a woman could do anything worthwhile. First she needed to know that she was a wonderful and talented lady, but then she needed to know life isn’t always serious—”
“Hence the belch recording.” I shook my head.
“Hey, it worked, didn’t it? And she went from a wimpy glorified clerk to running a space station, with some impressive stops in between. I’d like to think I had a little something to do with that.”
I laughed. “Okay, maybe. But I’m not sure that was a wise move this time.”
“Maybe not, but I am going with you,” he pointed out, clapping my shoulder.
“Not to interrupt this mutual admiration society,” a new voice broke in. Liza had just entered the room and stood by the door, shaking her head. “You two are quite the pair.” She moved in on him and grabbed his shirt. “Okay, hon, you can go. I’ll look the other way—not because of the recording,” she warned. “But because I trust Mitch when he says he can explain it.” She turned to me. “But I’ll warn both of you right now: when the U.N. team gets up here Friday and starts asking questions and screaming in outrage, I’ll know nothing about this. As far as I’ll be concerned, Lazz was a stowaway on the Transport. Got it?”
“I got it,” I promised. “And, thank you.” I knew it wouldn’t be that easy and that she was sure to take some heat for Lazz being along.
“Thanks, hon,” Lazz echoed. “And don’t worry. I’ll face the music when we get back. I just don’t want to miss—”
“I know,” Liza admitted softly. But then her tone turned dangerously sweet. “But, Lazz, honey? There a catch.”
“A catch?” He sounded worried for the first time.
“Yes, dear. You’re not going unless you give me the access codes to the hidden computer files where you have that recording stashed. I thought I found and deleted every copy, but apparently I was wrong. I will be rid of it!”
She was joking, but she was also dead serious, and I could see that Lazz got the message because his hands had been flashing over his Braille pad as she spoke, and with a final, firm press of the send chord, he looked up.
“There were two encrypted files, stashed in different sub-systems, and they’re both gone. I sent verification to your mailbox.”
“Thank you.” Liza’s voice turned genuinely intimate as she moved close to him. “And, Lazz?”
“Yeah, hon?” His hand cupped her face lightly.
“Be careful?”
“I will. And I’ll behave.”
I turned away, feeling like a shit for intruding as they kissed briefly. But “Commander Josarro” was back in charge before I knew it.
“Now, both of you,” she ordered briskly, “get your asses to the Transport bay, into your atmosphere suits and onto the Transport. Geneva is going crazy trying to reach you and I can only stall them so long. I’ve politely told them to buzz off since you’re getting ready for your meeting and can’t be disturbed because you don’t want to ‘overlook any of your protocol instructions’.” She rolled her eyes. “But remember,” she warned. “I know nothing!” And with that she left us to get ready.
“Yes!” Lazz let out an ecstatic drawl. “We’re off to see the Wizard.”
II.
The rotating ship we were approaching was obviously a deep space vessel. It consisted of a slender triangular shaft that was nearly a kilometer long and thirty meters in diameter, and it was capped by a three-sided and trunctuated pyramid, base forward and facing us. The instrument-dotted, thirty meter-wide base of the front pyramid was pitted and scarred in contrast to the shiny sides which narrowed until they merged with a circular plate in the front end of the central shaft. The plate and bow-unit were counter-rotating to be stationary relative to us.
Just aft of the bow-unit were three enormous equilateral and pyramidal pods extending base out from the central shaft, and rotating to provide maximum gravity at their triangular two-hundred-meter bases now that the ship was at rest. Each of the huge rotating pyramids was perfectly smooth and unmarked, fusing seamlessly with the central shaft about thirty meters from where their tips would have been. At the far end of the smooth central shaft loomed a large dish, nearly half a kilometer in diameter, that faced away from us. The circular shape of the dish was in jarring contrast to the angular shapes and straight lines of the rest of the ship.
We were both plugged into the control board since sonic signals wee obviously useless in space. Instead, a sophisticated radar set-up was being translated and fed into computers controlling our eyes, and we ‘saw’ the alien ship thanks to them. It was a slightly different type of vision, but the Traveler ship clearly visible—and an awesome sight. It was the first time I had seen the ship with my new eyes, and it was almost more impressive than the relayed probe pictures I had seen before the operation. Looking at it this way, the ship seemed somehow more sharply etched and intensely real.
“It’s incredible,” Liza’s voice commented from the overhead speaker in a hushed tone as we approached. She was plugged into a set of standard monitors and following our progress from the station. “I’d love to know what the hell type of propulsion they use. They used reaction thrusters for the final approach, but their main drive system is something out of this world.”
I nodded silently, remembering the relayed probe photos that showed the ship decelerating stern first at a constant .8 gravity, the huge pyramids lying parallel to the sides of the central shaft so that the deceleration supplied the gravity the rotation now provided. The tips of the pyramids had been pushed out by some sort of extension rod arrangement.
Lazz was at the controls of our van-sized Transport, and at the Travelers’ direction we were approaching the motionless bow-pyramid where a large opening gaped. As we entered the cargo bay and slowed to hang several feet over the deck, unseen grapples reached up to snag the bottom of the Transport to pull it down to rest on the deck with a solid, echoing thunk. The wide bay doors behind us had already closed, and a slight hazing of our vision revealed that air of some sort was being pumped back into the cavernous chamber of the Traveler ship.
After a seeming eternity, external sensors indicated that the air pressure outside was almost up to normal and I recorded the external pressure and took an air sample as a signal came for me to exit. I closed my helmet and switched to suit-air, seeing Lazz echo my actions.
I toggled my radio. “Well Liza, here goes! Keep your fingers crossed.”
I wasn’t sure if she could still hear my signal or not—I doubted it—but the pretense of outside contact was comforting. Lazz’s soft chuckle let me know he understood. Cycling through the airlock, we stepped out of the Transport nervously and blessed our good fortune that our magnetic boots were holding onto the plain and unmarked deck of the hold. I had wondered about the lack of decontamination procedures, but when I had passed on questions about it from nervous U.N. Science Team staffers, a curt, “not necessary, you are no source of contamination,” had been the only response before the Travelers had pressed on to other preparations for our meeting.